This invention relates to reading machines which are used as part of a remedial reading program to assist individuals with learning disabilities or severe visual impairments or blindness.
Reading machines have been used to improve the educational attainment of individuals with learning disabilities. They have also been used by persons having visual impairment or blindness. Reading machines often include a personal computer having specialized software that provides a reading machine function to the computer. In addition, the reading machines include other PC type components such as a monitor, an audio system, a disk or mass storage device, and a keyboard. In general, specialized software processes an input source document and generates synthetic speech to enable a user to hear the computer read through the document a word, line, sentence etc. at a time. Often these reading machines include a scanner to provide one technique to input source documents to the reader.
For individuals with learning disabilities such as dyslexia some conventional reading machines provide a speller feature that reads a word which a user desires to spell aloud a single letter at a time.